[Jesus said], “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”—Mark 8:34b

This is the point in Mark where, for the disciples (and us), the rubber hits the road. Up to this point things were going pretty well. Oh yes, Jesus’ hometown isn’t all that fond of him, resistance was building among the religious authorities, and King Herod had come down on John the Baptist like a ton of bricks. The rumblings are there. But the disciples had been with Jesus for all sorts of wonderful happenings—amazing healings, the feeding of enormous crowds, Jesus walking on water and even raising a little girl from the dead. They’d heard him tell so many wonderful stories, and even though they’d been pretty confused by his teachings at times (a lot of the time actually), they’d experienced first hand the liveliness, the fellowship, and the sense of purpose that had drawn them to Jesus in the first place. But now all of a sudden he’s talking about suffering and dying, and just what is it with this stuff about “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me”?

This is one of the hardest sayings of Jesus, and I suspect most of us would rather do without those words. I, for one, like it better when he’s saying things like “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest” [Mt. 11:38], or “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life” [Jn. 3:16]. These are comfortable words, safe sayings. After all, the world can be a harsh and cruel place, and shouldn’t our faith protect us and keep us safe? “No,” says Jesus, as he tells his disciples the bad news that he (even he) is going to die, and it’s going to be awful: bloody, painful, humiliating. What he’s doing is not safe, and if they expect safety they’re in for a disappointment.

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless God’s holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all God’s benefits.—Psalm 103:1-2

Psalm 103 includes some of my favorite scripture verses. There’s the promise that “the Lord works vindication and justice for all who are oppressed.” And the assurance of amazing grace that God “does not deal with us according to our sins…but as far as east is from west, so far God removes our transgressions from us.” And it opens with two verses we sing at the close of communion that hold a special meaning for me personally. I first heard them sung as part of communion in chapel my first year at seminary. We’d gather in a circle around the table, and often I’d have my infant daughter Kimberly in a backpack. The cantor would sing, “Bless the Lord, O my soul,” and I’d respond, “and all that is within me bless God’s holy name.” The cantor again, “Bless the Lord, O my soul,” and with my daughter Kim on my back as a blessed reminder I’d sing, “and forget not all God’s benefits.” Now I’m privileged to sing the cantor part. And in a few minutes as we sing these two verses, I’ll be remembering that today Kim turn 30 years old.

“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all God’s benefits…”

According to an ancient rabbinic story, in the beginning, God created people for blessing. They were to play together, frolicking in the streams, fields, and forests, enjoying laughter and just being together. But the serpent came and taught people to keep score. And people turned out to be very good scorekeepers—so good, in fact, they ended up spending just 20-30 minutes each day playing and the rest of the time figuring out the score. Eventually they gave up frolicking altogether, because it was just too hard to score frolicking. Blessings only mattered if they could be counted up and scored. So God sent the people out of the Garden of Eden, because God simply wasn’t interested in keeping score. Yet even this didn’t change things. People just kept adding up their scores, comparing them, and redoubling their efforts for higher and higher totals—as if their scores were what mattered most when they died.

When I was a graduate student in chemistry at Maryland, I served as a teaching assistant for a class on chemistry of the environment for two years where we were encouraged to develop our own bi-weekly pop quizzes for our recitation sections. For one quiz I asked my students to pose a good question about the material we had been studying and then to answer that question. Most asked relatively easy questions where they could parrot back an answer from the reading. But one student took a different tack, posing a truly excellent, insightful question that she could not answer. Instead she suggested several possible approaches that might lead to an answer. I gave her full credit on the quiz. She grasped that the essence of science is more about questions than answers. “The important thing is not to stop questioning,” Albert Einstein once said.

When I went off to seminary many years later I expected I would have to spend considerable time learning all about the various doctrines, creeds, and dogmas of the church. But to my pleasant surprise I discovered that Einstein’s words still applied. My church history classes focused largely on what kinds of questions people were dealing with when they came up with those “official” church teachings. My first theology professor was far more interested in our questions than in force-feeding us any answers. He assigned only one written assignment at the end of the semester. It could be on any topic we liked, but it had to address one overarching question: “What do I know that I don’t know now, that I didn’t know I didn’t know when the semester started?” In other words, what new questions had been given birth by my latest answers?

That’s a little turned around from our usual way of thinking. We usually ask questions in order to get answers. And maybe that’s all well and good in many everyday activities. Yet answers can put an end to further investigation—as well as promote a hierarchy of power, authority, and privilege that accrue to those who control and give out the answers. But when it comes to the kind of ultimate matters that are of concern in theology—theos-logos, which literally means “words about God” or "words about God"—answers are what generate new questions. It’s a different way of looking at things—like the old saw that “a chicken is an egg’s means of making another egg.” And it gives us a different take on the divine command in Mark’s story of the transfiguration, “This is my son… listen to him.”

How precious is your steadfast love, O God! All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings. — Psalm 36:7

Do any of you remember those bumper stickers that said, “Honk if you love Jesus”? I haven’t seen one in years. In fact I don’t notice all that many bumper sticker messages any more. I guess it’s all memes on Facebook and Twitter now. I do remember that when the “Honk if you love Jesus” bumper stickers were common I never heard very much honking. Maybe people were too shy… or they just didn’t love Jesus. There was this one time I was just sitting in my car at a really long red light, bored and impatient, and the car in front of me had one. So I decided on the spur of the moment to go ahead and honk—kind of a friendly little beep, beep, beep. And the other driver looked around… and gave me the one-finger salute and gunned off through the intersection. Well, I guess the signal had just turned green. But still…! I’d hoped for a friendlier response than that. Apparently, “Honk if you love Jesus” was not meant to be taken literally—at least not on a bumper sticker.

Some years ago a former dean of the San Francisco Theological Seminary named Browne Barr offered a different take on honking if you love Jesus in a book, titled High-Flying Geese, subtitled Unexpected Reflections on the Church and Its Ministry [Minneapolis,MN; Seabury Press, 1983]. This marvelous little book takes a flock of wild geese in flight as a metaphor for the church and offers up a number of surprising connections and insights. If the church of Jesus Christ really is (or can be) like a formation of wild geese honking its way across the sky, then we who love Jesus should go ahead and honk all we like.

Birds have long been taken as a metaphor for both God and God’s people. There’s the dove at Jesus’ baptism, and birds show up in all different kinds of hymns—like “His Eye is on the Sparrow,” “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” “God of the Sparrow,” and our closing hymn this morning, “On Eagle’s Wings.” In Celtic Christianity the wild goose is a symbol of the Holy Spirit.

[Jesus said,] “I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” — Mark 2:17c

In two recent sermons on Mark, I noted how he starts his gospel story off with a bang, letting his readers know right up front that this is “beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ the Son of God.” Then he continues with a real sense of urgency, taking just thirteen verses to get Jesus embarked on his ministry, where Matthew and Luke each take 3 or 4 chapters. Then Mark closes his prologue with a brief summary—“Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the good news.’” Last Sunday we saw how Mark then takes just 5 verses to tell how Jesus called four fishermen—Simon, Andrew, James, and John—to follow him and “fish for people.” And immediately they dropped everything to follow him. Things are always happening immediately in Mark. He’s in such a hurry, I think, because God’s kingdom is at hand.

So what is this “good news” of the “kingdom of God” Jesus is proclaiming to be at hand? Remember that the Greek word for “good news” is euangelion, a highly-charged political word intimately associated with events in the reign of the Roman Emperor. But this is not about the Emperor or his reign, but rather the “kingdom of God.” And to show this kingdom in action Mark now slows the pace of his tale, but only a little, as he quickly relates five events sandwiched in time between Jesus calling those four fishermen and then calling as his fifth disciple the tax collector Levi, of all people.

Consider. Mark chooses these five stories to introduce his readers to Jesus’ ministry and God’s kingdom. Why these five? Certainly other things happened. But Mark is in a hurry. All of Mark’s choices matter. These particular episodes will set a tone for the rest of Mark’s story and will begin to elaborate on both the “good news” and the “kingdom of God.” The first three happen in a single day. Many Bible commentators see this as Mark’s presentation of a typical day in the ministry of Jesus.